PDP Suspension Hammer Lands On Wamakko, Yuguda, others may shun Northern govs’ meeting. SOKOTO State Governor Aliyu Magatakarda Wamakko was suspended from the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) on Wednesday for alleged disrespect for the political grouping. Meanwhile, a serious division may have emerged within the ranks of governors of the 19 northern states ahead of their meeting on Thursday in Kaduna. The party’s National Working Committee (NWC) announced the action against Wamakko Wednesday after a meeting in Abuja. A communique released to journalists by the PDP’s National Publicity Secretary, Olisa Metuh, said: “The NWC at its 338th meeting held on Wednesday, June 5, 2013, extensively discussed the state of the party across the nation and its members as well as the repeated breaches and disregard to the Party’s Constitution by his Excellency, Dr. Aliyu Magatakarda Wamakko, the Executive Governor of Sokoto State. “The NWC notes that on several occasions, Governor Aliyu Magatakarda Wamakko had ignored invitations and lawful directives of the NWC in this regard and has continued to show complete apathy to the affairs of the party and contempt to an organ of the party. “Consequent upon the refusal of the Governor to honour yet another invitation by the NWC to appear before it today, Wednesday, June 5, 2013 without any reason, the Committee, in exercise of the powers conferred by Articles 57 (3), 57 (7), 58. 1(c ),(h), (f) and 59 (1),(2), hereby suspends the Executive Governor of Sokoto State, Dr. Aliyu Magatakarda Wamakko as a member of the party and refers the matter to the appropriate disciplinary committee of the party. This is in furtherance of the determination of the leadership of the party to enforce discipline at all levels within the party.” Some members of the Northern State Governors’ Forum (NSGF), and their representatives will not be at the meeting for discussions on political, social and economic matters affecting the North. Bauchi State Governor Isa Yuguda, who had announced his temporary withdrawal from the NSGF, may not attend the meeting. Some of the governors who are sympathetic to his cause, “because they could no longer work with people who are hypocrites,” may not also be there. The division is allegedly an offshoot of the schism in the larger, and hitherto all-embracing Nigerian Governors’ Forum (NGF) that currently has two factional chairmen, Rotimi Amaechi of Rivers State and Jonah Jang of Plateau State, after a disputed election on May 24 in Abuja to choose the head of the 36-member body. Some of the governors, who voted to return Amaechi for a second term of two years, later challenged the outcome and picked Jang as a consensus chairman. The factions have different secretariats in Abuja. However, the crisis in the NSGF is partly associated with the division of the body before the NGF’s election. According to reports, the NSGF initially decided on Governor Ibrahim Shema of Katsina State as a consensus candidate for the NGF election. But a few days to the poll, the NSGF threw up Yuguda as its candidate, whom Shema refused to step down for. Ostensibly to prevent presenting two candidates, which would have made it easier for Amaechi to be returned, the NSGF finally settled for Jang, whom it introduced to the PDP Governors’ Forum (PDP-GF), which then presented the Plateau helmsman for the election barely a few minutes away. “It is the processes that led to Jang being picked as a consensus candidate of the NSGF that is tearing the forum apart now,” a source told us last night in Kaduna. Still, it is not clear, which actions — pre- or post- the NGF election — that Yuguda and his sympathisers are protesting against. The governor has vowed not to return to the NSGF until the group made it known to the world why it had “reneged on its earlier agreement” with regard to the NGF election. A source close to him said yesterday that “our governor and some other governors in the North will not be part of the meeting (of the NSGF) the other governors are calling for tomorrow (Thursday).” “This is the outcome of the recent 36 governors’ election in Abuja,” the source said, adding, “some of us are just here, to come and see how they (Secretaries to the State Governments (SSGs) of northern states) are going about issues and not as representing our states. We are just here to observe; period.” Indeed, the Bauchi State Government’s scribe was absent during the meeting of the SSGs at the General Hassan Usman Katsina House, Kaduna yesterday. The meeting usually comes up a day before the parley by the 19 governors. Other issues to be discussed concern New Nigerian Newspapers (NNN) and the Northern Nigeria Development Company (NNDC. Relatedly, some indigenes of Bauchi State have condemned Governor Yuguda’s reported withdrawal from the NSGF. They argued that the state would now lack representation in the NSGF while matters affecting the region would be discussed without Bauchi having any input in such discussions. Malam Nasiru Ibrahim Darazo of the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) in Bauchi said the state would suffer from the action taken by Yuguda and nobody would be convinced by the reason he gave for leaving the NSGF. But Yuguda, who spoke on the Hausa service of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), monitored in Kaduna, said the likes of Malam Darazo “do not know the workings of the NSGF, whose membership is voluntary.” “It is not a must that one must be a member of the NSGF; it is just that one finds it necessary because issues about the North are being discussed,” he said. “But things should be done in unison. What we are doing must be done accordingly; we should not be in politics to be led astray; we should do things with the fear of one Allah. “Allah enjoined us not to betray trust; not to be hypocritical to one another. There is a verse on hypocrites from Allah and so, I can’t be among hypocrites; I won’t do that,” he stressed. Nonetheless, Darazo claimed that, “if it comes to betraying trust, Yuguda should be at the forefront because the people of Bauchi State voted for him on the platform of the All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP) but he betrayed them and returned to PDP.”
Posted on: Thu, 06 Jun 2013 07:03:24 +0000
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